The Effect of Transverse Shear Deformation on the Bending of Rectangular Plates

Abstract

The review of the Reissner-Mindlin's (RM) theory of bending of rectangular plates is presented in this paper. Presented are the advantages and disadvantages of RM theory, its application and finite elements (FE) for solving plate bending by RM theory. The Wolfram Mathematica software package is used to create LESAP program code with built-in algorithm for calculation of the plate bending. The results for a given number of examples, which include accuracy, convergence and the speed of the solutions convergence, are compared with the results obtained using the software package ABAQUS.